The Wolf Wore Plaid

by Terry Spear

  Maria was probably right. Julia wanted to see the laird up close and personal for the sake of writing her manuscript, but she didn’t want to hear the disparaging things he might say to her. That would ruin her image of him as the hero type. And if he looked at her the way he did in the picture, she feared he would see right through her.

  Just then, they topped the hill and faced a sea of white, curly fur blocking their way. Maria gasped and slammed on the brakes. Julia’s heart rapped a triple beat, and she grabbed the dashboard. Like a pastoral scene from an old-time painting, the mob of sheep was making its way to the other side of the rocky glen. Several sheared sheep—ewes, a curly horned ram, and lots of lambs—crossed the road, along with a sheepherder with a gnarled walking stick in hand and his collie.

  Instantly, Julia thought about the wolf.

  Once the sheep had passed, Maria started driving slower than before and cleared her throat.

  “As soon as we drop off our carry-on luggage, I have to drive over to the estate for a meeting.”

  Harold Washburn, the producer of the film, and most of the staff were staying at a local mansion. Maria had insisted on leasing Baird Cottage, citing its closeness to the castle. In truth, it was to hide that she and Julia were lupus garous and that Julia wasn’t truly working for Maria.

  “At this rate, I’m not going to make it in time. I haven’t seen a sign in a while, and… I thought we would have been there by now,” Maria continued.

  Julia strained to see into the distance, searching for another road sign, but the fog that had parted in places for her to glimpse the trees was again too thick to see a thing.

  A shadow of gray bolted across the road. The wolf. A gray wolf.

  Maria gasped and slammed on her brakes. Julia’s mouth dropped open, but the squeal died in her throat as headlights reflected off her side mirror. The headlights barreled on top of them. It was too late.

  Rubber and brakes squealed behind them. Heart pounding, Julia braced for the crash, the wolf forgotten.

  Bang! The rental car flew off the road like an airborne mini-plane. Then it landed hard, tearing down the incline. Bouncing. Jolting. Teeth jarring. A white cloud filled Julia’s vision and she gasped.

  A shotgun blast! A horrible jolt. Another bang!

  Before Julia could process what had happened, the white air bag deflated, and a snaking wall of rocks loomed before them only a couple of feet away in the fog.

  “Hit the brakes!” Julia screamed.

  As soon as he heard the explosions ahead, Ian MacNeill slowed his car and watched the road and the shoulders, looking for signs of a collision. Some poor fool must have been driving too slowly in the fog, while another had been driving too fast, hence the horrendous noise in the distance.

  His youngest brother, Duncan—which being quadruplets meant only by minutes—peered out the passenger window.

  “It had to be a car wreck,” Duncan said, his tone concerned.

  “Aye.” Ian watched for lights that might indicate vehicles ahead. Their wolf hearing was so enhanced that the sounds made could have been some kilometers distant.

  “I don’t see anything, Ian. Not a thing. No tire skids, no broken glass. But the explosive sounds were loud enough that the vehicles had to have damage.”

  Unease scraping down his spine, Ian agreed.

  Duncan leaned against the passenger door and then motioned toward the incline. “Taillights in the fog, down there.”

  “And scraps of red metal from a vehicle up here,” Ian said as his headlights glinted off pieces of metal and part of a taillight reflector.

  He pulled off onto the soft shoulder, turned off the ignition, and exited the vehicle. With Duncan at his side, he hurried down the incline toward the cherry-colored fog.

  “Hello, anybody hurt?” Ian called out, his dark voice traveling over the glen. He took a breath and swore he smelled a hint of the acrid odor of gunfire.

  No one answered his call, and another trace of unease wormed its way into his blood. Then he heard a moan. A woman’s moan.

  “Hell, probably a woman driving way too slow and got hit,” Duncan growled, quickening his run.

  Duncan should know since he’d smashed into the rear bumper of a woman’s car just the month before for the same reason. Ian hoped to hell no one had life-threatening injuries.

  The odor of burning tires, scraped raw metal, and refrigerant gas leaking from the car’s air-conditioning system drifted to them. Then smoke.

  “Smoke,” Duncan said, racing to the car.

  “Hello!” Ian called out again as they scrambled to reach the vehicle smashed into the dry dyke, the front bumper looking like an accordion, the red metal crumpled against the windshield. Glass everywhere sparkled like diamond shards on the ground. The windshield was shattered, and the driver’s side window, a spider web of cracks. White sheets of material covered the shattered dash—deflated air bags.

  The two rear tires had blown out, and the rear bumper was smashed and the metal torn from its moorings, one end now touching the ground. But Ian didn’t see telltale signs of another vehicle’s paint on this one. Yet after considering the rear bumper, he assumed someone had to have hit the car hard.

  Ian reached the driver’s door first, but the frame was so badly bent that the door wouldn’t budge. He peered in through the window as Duncan reached him. No one inside the vehicle. He glanced around, raised his nose, and smelled… petrol, hot and burning.

  “Duncan!” Ian grabbed his brother’s arm and yanked him away from the car.

  Boom! The forceful explosion threw them several meters away, heat singeing their eyebrows and zapping the moisture out of the cool, wet air. His ears ringing, hearing deadened, eyes and nostrils filled with smoke, Ian lay still in the grass, dazed. Then he jerked to a sitting position and looked for his brother.

  Duncan was sitting nearby, shaking his head as if clearing the fog from it. “Hell. The driver had better sense than we did.” His black clothes were now covered in gray soot and splotches of brown mud.

  Ian agreed. “The car had a couple of small suitcases—someone on holiday.”

  “A lass from the looks of it,” Duncan added.

  “Aye, one of the suitcases was pink, and I glimpsed a handbag sitting on the center console.”

  They both watched as orange flames consumed the car. No worry of anything else catching fire, as damp as it was. The rains that morning had turned everything to mud, which Ian’s light khaki-colored trousers were now soaking up. Ian stood and wiped the mud off his hands and onto his trousers. “You okay?”

  “Aye. Can’t hear anything worth a damn. Your voice sounds a million kilometers away. And my head is splitting.”

  “Same here. Come on. Let’s find the woman. She’s probably in better shape than we are.” Ian cast Duncan a dark smile. “You look like hell, brother.”

  Duncan snorted. “You don’t look much better.”

  Ian slapped him on the back, and the two made a wide circle around the car, looking for any indication of where the driver would have gone. Heel marks. Not one, but two sets of prints. “Two,” Ian said, pointing to the tracks. “Lassies, both of them.”

  “Do you smell something?” Duncan asked.

  “If you mean burning rubber, petrol, smoke, hot metal, and mud, aye. Was there something else you smelled then? A woman’s perfume, maybe?”

  Duncan tilted his head up, took another deep breath, and then coughed. “Let’s move away from the fire. I can’t smell anything but smoke. But I thought…” He shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Ian moved away from the burning car, but something in Duncan’s voice made him take another long look at his brother. Duncan was frowning, concentrating, and sampling the air, trying to locate the women.

  “Blood?” Ian asked, thinking maybe D
uncan had smelled an injury and was concerned about it. The smoke and burning petrol were wreaking havoc with his own sense of smell now.

  “Aye, well, that and…” Duncan looked at him with an odd expression. “…the faint scent of wolf.”

  Chapter 2

  “I still think we should have stayed with the car,” Julia grumbled under her breath, limping in her heels, her ankle throbbing. She held onto Maria for support as they hurried away from the wreck as fast as possible.

  The sound of an explosion at their backs made Julia jump. But they were far from there now. And they heard no more shouts, which worried Julia as her heart thundered spastically. What if the man who had come after them had been injured?

  The sweet, earthy smell of rain preceded the start of a shower. Then the raindrops poured down on them in earnest, the plants and earth offering up a cleansing scent.

  They would be drenched before they got much of anywhere, even though they weren’t letting up on the pace, despite their minor injuries. Julia wished she hadn’t taken off her pantsuit jacket to keep it from getting wrinkled by her seat belt. The jacket, being in the backseat, hadn’t been on her mind, not when they’d discovered Maria’s door was jammed tight and Julia had to help her over the console. Now, the shell of aqua silk Julia wore was plastered to her chest, revealing everything, she was sure. Her linen slacks were in the same shape, molding to her legs, feeling cold and wet like an alien second skin.

  “We should have stayed near the car at least,” Julia griped, wiping away the steady trickle of water droplets dribbling down her cheeks. “That’s what you’re supposed to do when you need assistance.” She tightened her grip on Maria’s arm. “With the car on fire, someone is sure to spot it eventually.”

  Maria hushed her again.

  Julia pulled her to a stop. “All right,” Julia whispered. “Why do you think whoever hit us did it on purpose?”

  “We were better off getting away from the car before it exploded.” Maria took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But that’s not the only reason. I got a death threat before we left L.A.”

  Uncomprehending, Julia stared at her. “What?”

  Maria started walking again, pulling Julia along, their shoes squishing and squelching in the mud. “A man with a distinctive Scottish brogue called me on my home phone, angry about us using Ian MacNeill’s castle for the film. He said I’d live to regret it. I didn’t believe it, much… then this happens. But it was more than that.”

  When Maria didn’t say anything further, Julia prompted, “More than that?”

  Maria gave her a hard look. “He said you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into.”

  “Me?”

  “He knew you had learned of the castle and passed the information on to me. But it was almost like he knew you. Personally. And he didn’t want you to have anything to do with Laird MacNeill. He sounded like an ex-lover.”

  “I’ve never had a boyfriend with a Scottish accent. I don’t know anyone like that.”

  “He said he knew your family. That if you hadn’t dumped the investment advisor, he would have had to do something about it. See what I mean? It’s like it’s personal with him.”

  Julia wracked her brain, trying to come up with anyone like that, but she couldn’t think of a soul. The part about him knowing about Trevor did concern her. Not that her relationship with him was secret. But how would someone in Scotland have known of it? As to her family, they didn’t even go by the same last name as she did. She was Julia Wildthorn, romance author—pen name. Real name—Julia MacPherson. But no one knew that. Not even Maria.

  “It’s probably just some ticked-off guy who gets off on threats.”

  Maria cast her a disbelieving look. “You can’t deny it sounds personal.”

  Julia thought about her grandfather and father insisting that she encourage Maria to consider Ian’s castle for the film production. What if bad blood existed between her family’s ancestors and this person’s ancestors? And now Maria was caught in the middle of it.

  “Did he say anything about owning a different castle? Maybe he wanted the business instead, and MacNeill is his fiercest competition.”

  “No.”

  Julia grimaced as another twinge of pain rippled through her ankle. She compensated by leaning more on her other foot and on Maria’s arm. “What did the L.A. police say?”

  “Nothing. Without a caller ID name or number, a recording of the phone call, more threats, or anything else to go on, they said they couldn’t do anything about it.”

  Julia pulled Maria to a stop again as she heard distant footfalls. “Whoever’s following us is getting closer.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m trying to hurry up and find a town or people or something.” Maria started hauling Julia along again.

  “You think it’s the guy who hit us?”

  “Maybe not, but what if it is? What with worrying that the car was going to explode any moment, with the smoke pouring out of the engine and the smell of the leaking gasoline, and you trying to help me out the passenger’s side door in a hurry because my door was jammed, we both lost everything in the car, including our cell phones. We have no way to call for help.”

  Julia patted her soaking-wet pants pockets and discovered she had four limp U.S. dollars, a handful of U.S. change, a scrunchie to tie back her hair, and… She touched the pocket of her shell, where the picture of Ian MacNeill was sitting close to her heart and the only thing still warm. She had pulled the photo out of her purse to take one surreptitious look at it, and for some reason, she’d stuck it in her shirt pocket instead of back in her purse.

  In her writer’s fruitful imagination, she envisioned a bond between them and that through some kind of body heat transference, the laird would know their troubles and come to rescue them. She was hopelessly romantic, which hadn’t gotten her anywhere with men, but she wasn’t giving up.

  She glanced over her shoulder but couldn’t see anything except fog and trees. “We could wander for miles and never find anyone. We should sit down and stay quiet. They’ll pass us by.”

  “No. For one thing, it’s getting dark. And for another, I have to get to Harold’s meeting. And finally,” Maria whispered back, “whoever is out there has been tracking us pretty damn well all along. Ever since the Scotsman shouted near the car, calling out to us.”

  “Was it the same voice as the man who talked to you on the phone?”

  “I can’t tell. The phone crackled and sputtered when the man called me in L.A., lousy reception. This guy’s voice was loud and clear.”

  And dark and worried and sexy, Julia thought. Not at all like someone who was out to get them. The wolf again came to the forefront of Julia’s thoughts. “The wolf has to be one of our kind.”

  Maria asked quietly, “What if he was with the guy that hit us? What if they worked in collusion?”

  Maria and her conspiracy theories.

  “Highly unlikely,” Julia said, in an attempt at reassuring. But that didn’t stop her own small, niggling worry.

  She began to look for any signs of a wolf in the area, skulking around in the fog and rain.

  The sudden rain shower slowed to a drizzle just as a flicker of light in the distance caught Julia’s eye. “Over there,” she whispered, her hopes elevating, and the two changed direction. “A building.”

  Distant hearty male singing drifted to them from the direction of the muted light.

  “We must look adorable,” Maria muttered, glancing down. Their clothes were soaked, but at least Maria was wearing her jacket, and even though she was wet, the fabric didn’t cling to her the way Julia’s did.

  “Road,” Julia said. “Dead ahead.”

  The rambunctious sound of men singing grew louder.

  “A pub, maybe,” Maria excitedly said, her voice still hushed as she dragged Julia across the deser
ted road, the music cheering them on. “We’ll be safe there and can borrow a phone and call Harold.”

  Welcoming brass porch lanterns glowed through the fog, illuminating the front of Scott’s Pub. The new mixing with the old, ancient stone walls surrounded double glass doors, back-lit from the warm wash of lighting inside. Above the pub, six dark windows overlooked the parking lot, and a sign read: ROOMS FOR LEASE. A corner of the building wrapped around and rose three stories, but it looked ghostly vacant. A sign carved into the stone said, HIGHLAND INN.

  Behind the building, trees and hills loomed tall, dwarfing the place. Outside, three cars, a pickup, and a van were parked, and unless tons of people had ridden in the five vehicles, Julia assumed liquor had loosened the singers’ tongues to a good-hearted bellow. In her romantic writer’s imagination, she envisioned the place filled with braw, kilted Highland warriors who would save them from harm if those following them meant to hurt them.

  Maria grabbed the door and opened it, then pulled Julia inside and shut the door. The aroma of juicy burgers grilling made Julia’s stomach growl.

  She needed food and water. And a towel, a shower, and clean clothes. The place seemed like their salvation.

  To keep from tracking in mud, they eased off their muddy heels and left them out of the way on the granite floor against the entryway wall. Then they padded in stocking feet into a more dimly lit room, complete with paneled bar, several tables, a dartboard on one wall, and the painting of deer on another. The singing had continued, and the men’s brogue was so thick that Julia didn’t understand a word of it.

  A man dressed in a black polo shirt and steel-gray slacks poured drinks from behind the bar, and two others dressed the same way sang along with those sitting at the tables. Julia was disappointed not to see any kilted warriors in Scott’s Pub. The six men were wearing trousers and shirts—everyday variety, nothing noteworthy for her manuscript. But they looked like a hearty lot, smiling and singing and swinging their mugs of ale.